


(the papers say) it's doomsday

by trevino



Series: harringrove songfics [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: (can characters die in a romantically tragic way? asking for a friend), Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Established Relationship, M/M, no beta we die like men, whoops sorry this is a sad one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:21:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27535195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trevino/pseuds/trevino
Summary: We creep up on extinction, I pull your arms right inI weep and say goodnight love, while my organs pack it in//Hawkins is a dangerous place to be, even in broad daylight. It never stays that way for long, anyway.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Series: harringrove songfics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2011231
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	(the papers say) it's doomsday

**Author's Note:**

> here's a sad one with a beautiful song for inspiration (and an odd one at that- it's meant as a love story between Theresa May and Donald Trump).
> 
> thank you to my irl friend for the song rec- i was surprised to see where this led, and it's not the style i'm used to writing, but i like it, and i hope you do too!
> 
> as always, i love comments, and if you have a song you'd like to see in fic-form, please tell me! i love prompts like that :)

_And here it is, our final night alive_

_And as the earth runs to the ground_

_Oh girl it's you that I lie with_

_As the atom bomb locks in_

_Oh it's you I watch TV with_

_As the world, as the world caves in_

(as the world caves in ~ mark maltese)

Everything goes to shit on a Tuesday morning.

That’s just the perfect sort of tragedy that they’ve come to expect in Hawkins, anyway. The gate that El and Hopper had fought so hard to close, and nearly lost their lives in the process. It finds its way open again, and they don’t notice until it’s too late.

The world is ending, and it’s up to a gang of unruly pre-teens and nicotine-addicted teenagers to stop it.

Perhaps the only saving grace is that it’s a holiday of sorts, and classes are cancelled as part of a teacher work-day at the middle and high schools. So at least they’re not trying to balance the eventual implosion of their realities alongside algebra midterms.

But regardless, small miracles aside, the gate is open once again, and this time, Billy Hargrove’s newfound solace in the middle of the woods is where the havok is wreaked.

~

Billy wakes up to the sound of feet clamoring up his rickety steps, hands banging heavily on his front door. He rolls over in bed— remembering that Steve hadn’t spent the night, and that he’d spent a rare evening alone in favor of his boyfriend eating dinner with his parents— and resigns himself to the fact that he won’t be sleeping in any further, despite it only being six o’clock in the morning. He pushes back the blankets, grabs a t-shirt to cover his bare chest (though he’s used to Steve seeing his scars, he thinks it’s more than just his boyfriend at the door, and he’s not exactly in the mood for judgement and scrutiny right now), and shuffles to the door.

When he opens the door, still wiping sleep from his eyes, he’s greeted by the sight of more pre-teens than he’d like to see at this hour. At least his boyfriend’s there to soften the blow— along with Mike, Dustin, El, Hop, Robin, and his own kid sister, Max.

“Whaa-?” is all he makes out as the group pushes their way into the cramped cabin’s living room, all chattering anxiously among themselves. “What’s going on?”

“Gate. Open.” El responds, monotone as ever, though Billy can see the nervousness in her face and narrow shoulders. Plus, those two words inspire enough fear within him, anyway, so it’s not like he needs more information.

Without asking, though, Dustin begins to ramble on. “I was having a sleepover with Mike, and then El started screaming into his walkie-talkie, and at first they were both just talking about dumb couple stuff—” and of course that’s what Dustin would say, since he’s been fairly bitter about _all_ his friends’ romantic lives ever since his relationship with Suzie ended a few weeks ago— “but then she kept saying stuff about the Gate, so we called Hopper, and he picked us up, and El led us here.”

“Slow down, kiddo,” Steve says with a tense smile on his face. He moves closer to Billy, who’s still standing somewhat frozen by the front door, and kisses his forehead (always eager to assert his one-inch height advantage over his partner) gently as a means of saying hello. “I think you’re giving Billy system overload.”

Dustin sighs, collapsing dramatically into the plush sofa nearby. Hopper takes a deep breath and takes over the storytelling, and though his voice stays calm, his eyes are nearing frantic territory. “The ground was starting to shake as we drove over here, son, I’m surprised it didn’t wake you up,” he says with a gesture to Billy’s still-tired state. 

“Yeah, uh, I didn’t sleep well.”

It goes without saying that he means _“I don’t sleep well alone,”_ or _“I can’t sleep without Steve,”_ but the feeling’s mutual, and Steve can sense it in his partner’s tense stature. He places an arm around his waist, pulling Billy ever-closer to him.

Robin is next to speak, face flushed a slight red and hand clenching a bat (not unlike Steve’s own nail-spiked one, which now rests against the doorframe). “So what’s next?”

She’s the newest to this group— besides Billy anyways, despite being intimately familiar with the goings-on of the Upside Down after being inhabited by the Mind Flayer for far longer than he’d like to remember— so she’s still somewhat jumpy about the whole “fighting monsters” thing. She’s good with a bat, though, and Billy’ll give her credit for that.

Max, who has been silent up until now, speaks with a tone that he’s come to expect from her: fierce, determined, and only a little reckless. “We kill them all.”

As if responding to her words, the house shakes a little bit on its cinderblock foundation. Billy’s used to earthquakes from his time in California, sure, but there’s nothing quite like the feeling of a paranormal shift in the universe. El shoots up from her perch on the sofa’s armrest and bolts out of the door, leaving so quickly they barely have time to register her movement.

Immediately, everyone’s jumping to their feet, and Billy, who had felt still so tired a moment ago, is now wide awake. Fear of mortal (or immortal in this case) danger can do that to you. Steve tosses him a blade, the two-foot axe he’s become fond of in their recent Demo-Dog attacks (and recent is a loose term, since it’s been nearly two months since they were invaded by the creatures), and they head out of the cabin, following the trail led by El’s bare feet. They can hear _something_ , most likely a pack of Demo-Dogs, but there’s still no telling exactly what they’re walking— running, more like— into now.

Steve’s hand slips into Billy’s, locking fingers as they brace against the cold morning air. It’s a silent gesture, and a subtle one at that, but Billy feels a little safer having Steve by his side.

Then, there’s no more time to think about anything at all, as the creatures approach. There’s more than they expected, surrounding them in the clearing, and they look _hungry_. Steve swings at one, and Billy at another, and then the once-quiet air is filled with inhuman screams and sounds Billy knows will never be truly erased from his memory.

It’s never quite a fair fight, in moments like this. Sure, they’ve got the Chief of Police on their side, and a not-entirely-human girl with powers they still don’t fully understand, but these are _Demo-Dogs_. Creatures with flowers for faces and claws that can cut you to pieces in the blink of an eye. They’re lucky, frankly, that none of them have been hurt too badly in any of these encounters. 

Billy prays, as he slices through another creature in his peripheral vision, harder than he ever did before moving to Hawkins. Harder than he ever had in wishing his mother would survive the cancer, in wishing his father wouldn’t leave him bruised and betrayed. He prays, because if these creatures came from some sort of hell, then maybe there’s a heaven up there to save them all too.

His boyfriend is somewhere around him, fighting his own respective demons in between the trees, but Billy can barely keep an eye on him as he avoids the grasp of a creature that Robin’s beating to pieces with her steel-tipped baseball bat only feet from his head.

He can hear gunshots, too, likely from Hopper’s gun. At least, he hopes no one gave a gun to Max— though he no longer lives with the Hargrove-Mayfield family, he certainly doesn’t want to have to explain that to Neil. 

All around him, he can feel the tense air of death and fear. 

And then, the creatures are gone. 

Or, perhaps more accurately, they’re replaced by something worse. He raises his head to look around, noticing that instead of the bleak morning sunlight of Hawkins, they’re somewhere new. And though he’s never actually been there, only heard the stories from Steve and the rest of the Party, he knows immediately where they are.

The Upside Down.

If he wasn’t scared before (and he was, though he didn’t want to admit it), he certainly is now.

At least he’s not alone. He doesn’t think he can face these creatures by himself, and not give in, in the ways he had that summer. 

He’s different, and not just because of the scars that remain on his body. Different, now, because when he feels his heart race with fear, he has something to hold onto.

Steve, eyes wide, stands only a foot away.

“Fuck,” is all he says, and he’s fairly accurate in that simplistic assessment of their new situation.

Because while at least they have each other, it seems that the rest of their fighting gang— Mike, Dustin, El, Hop, Robin, and Max— have vanished. (Billy prays, this time not solely for himself, that they’re still in the Hawkins reality, and that they’re safe.)

He, however, is trapped with his boyfriend in the Upside Down.

They take off running, hand in hand (weapons still grasped tightly in their free hands), out of the forest— or, more accurately, what used to be the forest, since now their surroundings are just sludge-covered mounds that seem to be _moving_. Billy refuses to even contemplate that possibility.

But no matter how far they run, or how loud they yell for help, there’s no one there. 

Billy’s mind begins to race. He doesn’t know much about the Upside Down (most of his memories as the Mind Flayer’s host faded when the creature crumpled to the ground in Starcourt), save for what the kids have told him, or what El showed him in a vision, but he knows that none of this can be considered even remotely good.

He’s right, at least, but that’s not much of a consolation. 

When they stop running, it looks like they’ve barely moved at all, but they’re both breathing so heavily it feels like they’ve traveled for miles and miles. 

Steve collapses against one of the mounds of debris and pulls Billy down alongside him. 

“We’re fucked, aren’t we?” Billy asks, running a hand through his sweaty and unkempt hair. He realizes, perhaps too late, that he’s only clad in Steve’s Hawkins-branded sweatpants and a fraying t-shirt, and his bare feet are now scraped and bruised. He didn’t even notice the pain.

“Yeah, probably,” Steve sighs. “Definitely.”

They sit there for a few moments more, hand in hand, as the world around them begins to get even darker than it had been before— if that was even possible. It’s quiet, now, and that’s almost scarier than the sounds of unimaginable creatures.

It’s almost as if the world is closing in on them, the edges of the universe feeling infinite and impossibly close all at once. Billy holds Steve in his arms, singing softly the songs his mother once serenaded him with. 

There’s not much else to do, now, but wait. 

Wait for someone to rescue them, or for El to whisper to them, or— considering all their options now— something to attack them.

Might as well be prepared for everything.

And when Steve falls asleep, his breath slowing to a simple rhythm against Billy’s chest, it’s almost peaceful. As if anything in this narrow corner of Hell could even be considered remotely so. 

But somehow, though it feels like their world might be ending, with Steve snoring softly in his arms, there are still small miracles in his mind.

Because after a lifetime of being all on his own, and having no one to rely on (everyone leaves him, eventually), even in this darkest of all possible moments, Billy’s finally found the one person worth fighting for.

(So when the monsters attack, hours later, and Steve is jostled awake by BIlly’s screams, and they kill creature after creature after creature until it feels like they’ll never see sunlight again—

When Billy feels a claw pierce into his throat and choke out his last breath—

When Steve screams so gutturally and so painfully as his own chest is ripped to shreds—

It’s awful, and empty, and the worst way to die.

But at least Steve’s hand is still held tight in Billy’s.

At least neither will die alone.)


End file.
